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Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light...

Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometers of ice, destabilizing the Earth's crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the destruction and submergence of Atlantis.

The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. But there were survivors - known to later cultures by names such as 'the Sages', 'the Magicians', 'the Shining Ones', and 'the Mystery Teachers of Heaven'. They travelled the world in their great ships doing all in their power to keep the spark of civilization burning. They settled at key locations - Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, Baalbek in the Lebanon, Giza in Egypt, ancient Sumer, Mexico, Peru and across the Pacific where a huge pyramid has recently been discovered in Indonesia. Everywhere they went these 'Magicians of the Gods' brought with them the memory of a time when mankind had fallen out of harmony with the universe and paid a heavy price. A memory and a warning to the future...

For the comet that wrought such destruction between 12,800 and 11,600 years may not be done with us yet. Astronomers believe that a 20-mile wide 'dark' fragment of the original giant comet remains hidden within its debris stream and threatens the Earth. An astronomical message encoded at Gobekli Tepe, and in the Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt,warns that the 'Great Return' will occur in our time...

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Author Graham Hancock's new book Magicians of the Gods is a triumph of investigation, intuition and interpretation. Deeply immersed in an ocean of new scientific and archaeological discoveries and yet prescient enough to conceive of humanity's mysterious development and humble place in the universe, Hancock weaves a multidisciplinary thread that connects oral traditions, the mystery of place and time with contemporary scientific observations and evidence....A masterpiece of penitentiary distillation, intuitive speculation and multidisciplinary perspective, Magicians of the Gods comes with the highest recommendation." - New Dawn on Magicians of the Gods

“Ingenious.” ―Kirkus Reviews on Magicians of the Gods

"Magicians of the Gods schools the attentive reader in exotic locales and colourful (often thwarted) characters, dusty ancient knowledge and pristine contemporary science and theory. Hancock's passionate, detailed prose transports us around the globe and across millennia in an accessible and direct manner.: - New Dawn on Magicians of the Gods

"Hancock does a magnificent job of proving beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization, which flourished during the Ice Age, was destroyed in global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago." ―Atlantis Rising on Magicians of the Gods

“A reading experience of pure gold...History buffs, Bible scholars, anyone who likes a great intellectual detective yarn will plunge into The Sign and the Seal and not come up for air until the end.” ―Seattle Times on The Sign and the Seal

“Intriguing and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought.” ―Kirkus Reviews on Fingerprints of the Gods

"I do so recommend this book. Hancock is an enchanting writer, and such a curious and thoughtful and intuitive investigator of the mysteries." - Anne Rice, author of Interview with a Vampire

About the Author

GRAHAM HANCOCK is the author of the major international non-fiction bestsellers including The Sign and the Sealand Fingerprints of the Gods. His books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into thirty languages. His public lectures, radio and TV appearances, including TV series, Quest For The Lost Civilization and Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, as well as his strong presence on the internet, have put his ideas before audiences of tens of millions. He resides in the UK.

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Compared to Hancock's earlier work, this book is more mature and less speculative. Hancock carefully and thoroughly presents evidence for his research that seems on par with academic standards. What's presented here should no longer be called "pseudoarchaeology". I suspect someday we will look back on Hancock's work as an inflection point or tipping point in rewriting history.

Hancock's strongest (and almost irrefutable) theory is that there was a lost, global advanced civilization prior to Sumerian and Egyptian cultures. Hancock provides evidence that points to a comet hitting earth around 10,500BC, melting the ice caps / ice age, and a simultaneous rising-sea wiping out this civilization along with most of their technology. This is probably his weakest theory, though it has some valid and well-supported points. Hancock points to the flood legends around the globe, including Noah's biblical flood, as a reference to this flood along with evidence that a comet did in fact hit earth near the north pole. Though Hancock himself does not seem to subscribe to the biblical "Genesis Record", his work greatly helps the case for at least parts of it. Genesis / biblical flood proponents could see Hancock's work fitting nicely into their chronology of events, except with two cataclysms:

1) An advanced culture occupies earth2) A worldwide cataclysm occurs which not only floods the earth, but causes mass volcanic eruptions. The extreme mass of particles in the atmosphere reflect sunlight and cause global cooling (Research "hydroplate theory")3) A small group of humans survive this deluge, bringing animal life with them, AND the technological knowledge of their culture. They exit their "ark" while the flood waters recede. The earth is still very cool, and ice has formed everywhere.4) This band of survivors use their technological knowledge to form an advanced culture and spread across the globe rapidly. They build Göbekli Tepe, the Great Pyramid, Sacsayhuaman, and possibly other monuments such as Stone Henge...etc. Genesis proponents would point to the Nimrod /Babel period. The epic of Gigamesh also could confirm this.5) After a few hundred years, the ice begins to melt -either from natural global warming or through the events of Hancock's younger dryas comet, sea level rises again, and wipes out much of this advanced civilization. The remnants of this civilization eventually become the Sumerian, Egyptian, and other ancient cultures, except much of their technology is lost or no longer understood.

Graham Hancock has done another marvelous job drawing connections among ancient information in a level headed manner, and has presented a brilliantly coherent framework that explains many enigmas.

It is sadly unsurprising that the largely conservative and ossified mainstream always puts up heavy resistance to this information; as this is all too often the case to any challenger of the status quo among academia.

What we've learned from history is that hardly anyone ever learns from history, to quote Alan Watts.

To have a deeper understanding of the material I highly recommend reading Fingerprints of the Gods if you have not yet, as this book will make much more sense with that background knowledge. It does well enough on its own, and presents a brilliant case that a planetary impact and the global floods/cataclysm that resulted was the main culprit in nearly wiping out an advanced civilization in pre-history, however the weight of this revelation is much heavier if you are acquainted with the thick foundation already laid out in Fingerprints of the gods.

The two key elements missing from Fingerprints were the smoking gun that caused the deluge and conclusive evidence of the advanced civilizations presence thousands of years before what we thought was the advent of civilization. This book has both in spades.

Gobekli Tepe is a massive megalithic site crafted by highly skilled stone workers over 10,0000 years ago, and Gunung Padang, another fascinating site in Indonesia, is looking like it might be even older.

The ongoing studies and debate surrounding the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis are analysed and simplified. They seem to have hit the ice caps that covered North America and Northern Europe, leaving little if any craters but causing massive floods, fires, and so on. The evidence is clear enough, and made even more profound if we keep in mind the countless ancient "myths" around the globe that give detailed descriptions of the event. Resistance to the hypothesis, and even outright dismissal by the more dogmatic and conservative sectors of the scientific community, is always to be expected.

Resistance to paradigm-shattering information has always occurred, even in the scientific arena. This is, however, only one piece of an incredibly important puzzle that we desperately need to figure out if we are to pull ourselves out of the mess we are in.

Hancock's notion of a "species with amnesia" is far, far more serious than perhaps even he realized. There is ongoing research, conducted by Tony Wright and others, indicating the development of our neural system is literally compromised and has been progressively reverting to a more primitive mammalian type. Hancock is aware and a fan of the research but it gets curiously omitted here, possibly because of the overwhelming task it would be integrating it into the book, and making its focus too broad. Though it fits in perfectly with his research on psychedelics - one of the main approaches ancient cultures have employed throughout the entire world for millenia in order to address and treat our condition - and because of the obvious gaps it fills in regards to the nature of these "magicians of the gods".

Were they really regarded as nearly having god-like status because of their superior technology and craftsmanship, or was there more to it than that? If we take the ancients for their word, then they had cognitive abilities far beyond what even we would consider normal. You would be hard pressed to find ancient accounts, or even accounts of modern tribal groups in the amazon and elsewhere, that believe their ancestors were more primitive. They virtually always regarded them as more advanced, and not just technologically. Cognitively and spiritually. They knew a lot about consciousness and sought to preserve that knowledge while keeping the fire of civilization kindled amidst the chaos of the cataclysm. We can conclude they did very well because all across the world can be found ancient medicinal and consciousness methods of all sorts (yoga, meditation, alchemy, shamanism, herbalism, etc. ). Even though many have devolved over time.

But we don't simply have to take the ancients word for it about this. There is a mountain of evidence for this scenario, which should not come as a surprise since nearly every bright man or women throughout the ages has deemed humanity as being virtually insane. Our culture and civilization is a reflection of our dysfunctional state of mind. The ancients almost universally regarded their ancestors as more advanced, and do not talk about progressive advancements. Is this just because of the shattering effects of the cataclysms at the end of the last ice age, or is there more to it than that? Why then do they also speak of mans nature degrading even before the cataclysm? And why do they even engage in various techniques and medicines (psychedelics, meditation, fasting, sleep deprivation, and so on) to address this condition at all?

Our brain is the most complex and chemically sensitive piece of tissue in the known universe. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it evolved in the African tropics, in a symbiotic relationship with one of the most complex biochemical environments/foods on the planet. Like the countless "myths" about the cataclysm at the end of the last ice age, these "myths" of a lost paradisaical golden age of human consciousness may have some basis as well. The food we were eating had incredibly complex biochemistry and was intimately involved in the development and operating environment of our brain for millenia. You would not expect to be able to build a working vehicle out of materials completely irrelevant to it's original design and development specifications...yet we assume our brain will develop and function normally on literally "junk" food. Why is this simple engineering logic so non-existent in our society?

Perhaps we are just so deluded at this point that we are blind to our own condition. A species with amnesia, literally.

Research Tony Wrights book Return to the Brain of Eden. You will not be disappointed. The forward by Dennis McKenna, the legendary brother of Terence McKenna, explains the gist well enough to give you a taste.

I'd normally feel strange plugging someones book in a review on another book, but the connections between these two areas is agonizingly obvious and very few seem to be drawing the pieces together. Both Hancock's work, Wright's, and others have changed my life in ways I can't even begin to download into such a feeble medium as language, and I'd like to share that experience with all of you as we collectively journey forward on this mind boggling ride we are on.

The book is transformational and like a college course. I will no longer believe the history of the world in the same acceptance found in all libraries, written history. THERE IS MUCH MORE AND THERE WAS A FLOOD GLOBALLY. Truth in that or if you doubt requires reading here. My one criticism is the author is so defensive it bogs down so you want to skip pages. However the defense is likely required since all archaeology and all discoveries are threatened by the premise of a history 10,000 years ago predating all the experts now published so Hancock's findings vs the world experts will be a war. I think he is 90% correct and this changes all history books and sets a new normal for the history of the world as we know it. Worth reading, a long book but in itself it is a new history of the world and it will change your thinking.